Scoop buys a bike

As Woody Allen once famously said, to rationalise running off with his wife’s daughter, “the heart wants, what the heart wants.” Okay, so that is disturbing. Suppose though, Woody he was not wanting his step daughter, but his mate’s push-bike. Ah, so you do understand! (When it comes to matters of the heart, I know most of us gents struggle less with the whole notion of “feelings”, if we stick to the subject of bikes. Not since we could to win them in sword fights, have we allowed ourselves to feel so strongly for women—as Woody does, plainly.)

I have now learned that my ol’ buddy Scoop has, for the past year, been harbouring a deep deep jealously, for my black bike, dating from the day I loaned it to him for our last linen run. Though he read with interest your suggestions that he buy a Globe Daily 3, or a Creme Cafe Racer, I should have known he was secretly preparing to blow me out of the pond.

What hurts most, is that Scoop has known all along, my secret shame, how with my very first post as a bike blogger, in 2009, I vowed to buy a cross-frame, or “priest bike”, but somewhere along the line settled instead for an Opa (grandpa) bike.

Well hats off to you, my ol’ buddy Scoop, for biting the bullet and ordering your very own priest bike. I hope it brings you many years of self-satisfaction and one-up-manship, over me, your friend since the 80s, who would always do anything for you.

The tables of jealously have been turned back on me, even more than Scoop could really know. Unlike me, he hasn’t spent weeks riding around Copenhagen, to know how even the most seasoned bike-watcher still gets a jolt by the sight of a cross-frame, usually when they think they have seen everything, just because 10 or so Pedersens have just passed them by.

Upon catching the eye, the priest’s bike next works on arousing its victim, by drawing their gaze to a steel rod emanating—or so it does seem—from directly under the seat. Don’t believe standard histories about this frame being conceived to give priests more stand-over height when wearing their robes. The stand-over height is no better on a priests bike, than any other. The designer’s aim (and he must have been sick) was to get that top tube right up there baby, as though it were poking out of your trousers. The name “priest bike” was actually bestowed in jest, when the Vatican banned priests from riding these things. They were causing bouts of hysteria, or what was then termed “enthusiasm”, among too many nuns.

And if all that isn’t sexy enough, here is the clanger: my friend’s new bike will arrive with a Brooks Saddle, a kind of saddle we know bears the imprint of each rider’s own ischium, so accurately, that Dutch women need to put covers on their saddles when they leave them outside, or risk returning to find perverts transfixed by their imprints.

I would not get too jealous Dr Beehoving. While it is eye-catching, it also looks a little like the design was inspired by a handyman’s repair of a broken ‘lady frame’ by welding a spare length of pipe from under the house across the top of the bike for bracing and to stiffen things up a little.
Not clean cut and with minimal fuss the way I prefer a man-bike to be.
Anyway, clicking on the links in your blog, I came across your linen run from nearly a year ago. Are you planning a repeat? One linen run may not qualify as a ‘movement’ and I could see myself jumping on the bandwagon, if there in fact is a bandwagon. I would quite happily ride at the back with the kids and the greenies as neither me nor my bike are very photogenic or fast. You may get annoyed by me organizing granddad to pick up the kids (that most certainly wont make it back from Belmont) with the old Falcon. But hey, this is Australia, and that is the kind of thing that happens here all the time. Since the bikes were pushed of the roads and the trains stopped running along Fernleigh Track to get back into town.

Lukas, funny you should mention our linen movement, as I have just returned from a high level linen run movement meeting, where it was decided 4 March should be our date for the next one. Rather than ride in the dappled shade of an existing great bike route, like the Fernleigh Track, we will ride around a future great bike route, imagining dappled shade and birdlife etc: http://cycle-space.com/?page_id=7701
I do hope you will join us!

Your comparison to a lady’s frame is accurate, though very unflattering. I would describe it this way, as combining the lateral rigidity of a mixtie, with the traditional expectation than mens bikes have top tubes, though without overly compromising the vertical compliance of mixtie frames, and at the same time adding to the triangualation of the frame to resist torsional flex, leading to a perfect balance of power transfer and comfort, though with a minor weight penalty, of perhaps 300g.

Hmm, perhaps you’re right. But you must keep in mind, Scoop is from car-land, where they need to feel flagellated by costs, each time they leave home. A free ride would have left him feeling empty inside.